Landscapes of Titan

Titan’s lacustrine depressions develop in relatively flat areas. They lie between 300 and 800 meters above the level of the northern seas. They are typically rounded or lobate in shape and some of them seem to be interconnected. Their widths vary from a few tens of kilometes, such as for most of Titan’s lacunae, up to a few hundred kilometres, such as Ontario Lacus or Jingpo Lacus. Their depths have been tentatively estimated to range from a few meters to 100 - 300 meters, with “steep”-sided walls. The liquid-covered depressions would lie 250 meters below the floor of the empty depressions, which could be indicative of the presence of an alkanofer in the sub-surface, analog to terrestrial aquifers, filling or not the depressions depending on their base level. The depressions sometimes possess a raised rim, ranging from a few hundred meters up to 600 meters in height.

Dissolution on Titan and on Earth: Towards the age of Titan’s karstic landscapes (pdf)

h/t LB

Images: Lakes of Titan, Sikun Labyrinthus. NASA

Kraken mare

At 400,000 km², Kraken Mare is believed to be the largest sea in Titan's north polar region. The maximum depth appears to be 160 meters. Shallow capillary waves 1.5 centimeters high moving at 0.7 meters per second have been detected.

— Wikipedia

Ice spires, double sunrises, methane seas

...the ice spires of Callisto; Verona Rupes a great cliff on Miranda, a tiny moon of Uranus; the weird sunrises and sunsets of Mercury; the equatorial mountain range on Iapetus; the asteroid Hektor; Herschel Crater on Mimas; the methane seas of Titan; and, of course, the fabulous geysers of Enceladus.

– phenomena nominated as candidates for sixth and seventh place in a list of wonders of the solar system.

And so they tell us that Anaxagoras answered a man who was...asking why one should choose rather to be born than not – “for the sake of viewing the heavens and the whole order of the universe.”

– from the Eudemian Ethics of Aristotle, quoted by Jonathan Glover.


Image: geysers on Enceladus. NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute via wikimedia.